Grants or Gifts Relating to Women in Higher Education

Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.

A research team led by Laura Gee, an associate professor of economics at Tufts University in Massachusetts, received a $157,065 grant from the Women in Economics and Mathematics Research Consortium to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to gender disparities in economics professions. The research team will investigate the causes of women’s underrepresentation in economics and design interventions to increase the low rates of participation by women in the field. The project involves a field experiment across multiple sites and stages of professional development, including high school and entering college.

A research team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Abramson Cancer Center has received a $10 million grant from the Department of Defense for research on finding and targeting dormant tumor cells before they can cause a recurrence of the disease. “Recurrence is a lifelong issue and problem for breast cancer survivors because it can happen decades after their initial treatment,” said Dr. Angela DeMichele, the Alan and Jill Miller Professor in Breast Cancer Excellence at Penn and the principal investigator. “This grant will allow us to extend the research we’ve already started and continue to answer questions about what happens to people years down the line. We want to get away from ‘watchful waiting’ and move toward ‘active surveillance’ by learning how we can intervene to prevent relapse of breast cancer.”

The most recent of many gifts from the Dr. and Mrs. R. Faser Triplett Foundation to the University of Mississippi provides $125,000 in operational support for the Ole Miss Women’s Council for Philanthropy. The Women’s Council provides scholarships for tuition and books, as well as guidance and training in leadership skills, career development, and personal growth throughout the students’ tenure at the university.

Jackson State University in Mississippi has received $2.5 million in first-year funding to establish the Delta Mississippi Center of Excellence in Maternal Health, which will evaluate innovative approaches to reduce pregnancy-related complications and deaths and promote maternal health equity. The funding is the first step in a proposed seven-year, $17 million project to address maternal health disparities in the Mississippi Delta. Mary Shaw, a professor in the department of behavioral and environmental health at the university is the principal investigator.